jerram

Mount Jerram

August 5, 2016

Mountain height:    2996 m
Elevation gain:       1150 m
Ascent time:           8:00
Descent time:         7:30

Climbing with Kevin.

When Kevin asked if I was interested in joining him in an attempt of rarely ascended Mount Jerram, I simply couldn’t say no. I will make any excuse to further explore one of my favourite areas in the world – the Opal Range of the Canadian Rockies. As part of Kevin’s Opal 35 project, the ascent would also get him one peak closer to completing that most impressive task – the 35 named and unnamed peaks of the Opal Range.

Given that Rick Collier and John Holmes spent 13 hours completing the ascent from a bivy near the objective, we left Calgary at 4 am, in hopes of doing a one day ascent. The approach went without a hitch and within a couple of hours we were slogging up rubble slopes below the west face of the mountain. A stiff scramble up rock of varying quality brought us to the start of the technical climbing.

Kevin had already volunteered to lead all the climbing sections and I was more than happy to let the much better climber lead the way up. We decided to use Rick Collier’s variation route, as opposed to the original route, pioneered by legendary climbers Jim Tarrant and Don Morrison, in 1957. The climbing was exactly as Mr. Collier described.

Kevin climbed the first 5.4 pitch wearing boots. It was the most fun pitch on solid rock with good holds. A scree ascent led to the second and most interesting pitch. Collier describes two overhangs and stemming a chimney, at 5.5. Time for rock shoes (I had already put mine on for the first pitch!) Once again Kevin took the lead and did an awesome job. It was a very cool pitch, over a cave-like feature and then up through a narrow crack. Long legs certainly helped for the stemming. I’m sometimes surprised at how much I can stretch my super inflexible limbs when it is absolutely required to do so!

We were now pretty close to the summit, although that fact was impossible to discern from our present location. Collier describes the final pitch as “up down-sloping and quite rotten rock (5.6).” I would probably rewrite that description to read, “Scary as all sh@% (5.6)!” Kevin carefully climbed the mostly unprotectable and severely loose rock, although he was able to place a couple of good slings around rock horns. My turn – even coming up with a solid belay from above, I found this to be one of the most unnerving situations I had ever experienced in the mountains. It felt like the whole mountain simply wanted to crumble around you. Fortunately, it didn’t and after an exposed traverse across more ridiculously unstable rock, I joined Kevin at the summit.

Hi-fives and congratulations were extended and we found the summit register. Not surprisingly, ours was the 3^rd recorded ascent. Only the teams of Tarrant /Morrsion, and Collier/John Holmes has visited this summit and left a record of it. Although I sign summit registers infrequently, this was one I was definitely going to leave a mark in! 6 people in 59 years – given the relative obscurity of the peak and the last nasty pitch of climbing, my guess is the next 59 years will see about as much, if not, less traffic!

The summit view was fantastic, as are practically all summit views from Opal Range peaks. As usual, it was the frightening connecting ridges between those peaks that provided the most interest. The view to the south of Cat’s Ears and Mount Elpoca was particularly alarming (in a good way!)

And now to get down. Fortunately, this descent was not the epic of our Mount Burney descent in 2007, but it certainly wasn’t trivial either. With a little searching we were able to locate the piton placed by Collier and John Holmes – “After a quick lunch, we scrambled back down the ridge and spent considerable time trying to find a crack strong enough to take a rappel pin -- the entire ridge seemed to be composed of rubble and honey-combed rocks,” wrote Collier. A quiet, somewhat somber and reverent moment followed, in fond memory of the late and iconic Mr. Collier – one of the Canadian Rockies most prolific climbers and just plain great guy; a true role model for us all.

We decided to use that piton, backing it up with a sling. Kevin had the unenviable task of rapping down and retrieving the slings. It was an intensely awkward rappel, requiring a ton of lateral movement instead of down, but there was no other way to do it. After rappelling down the overhangs we opted to follow the last piece of Rick’s alternate descent route and avoid the last rappel, by traversing south and picking our way down the west face. We may have gone too far south and decided to do one more rappel to get to easy terrain.

Finally down to easier terrain, we made good progress back down the valley, in diminishing light. Soon the headlamps came out and unfortunately with them came some route-finding issues. We found a good trail to follow that was initially going in the right direction, but seemed to eventually steer us off course. Now pitch black, except for the starry sky, navigating by headlamp was more difficult than we had anticipated. After taking a few wrong turns we eventually found the correct route, reaching the car just before midnight.

A long but extremely rewarding day with an old (but still young!) and good friend. Thanks Kevin!